ed _kind_ in the same way, but not very properly; as, "_All kind_ of
living creatures."--_P. Lost_, B. iv, l. 286. This irregularity it would be
well to avoid. _Manners_ may still, perhaps, be proper for modes or ways;
and _all manner_, if allowed, must be taken in the sense of a collective
noun; but for sorts, kinds, classes, or species, I would use neither the
plural nor the singular of this word. The word _heathen_, too, makes the
regular plural _heathens_, and yet is often used in a plural sense without
the _s_; as, "Why do the _heathen_ rage?"--_Psalms_, ii, 1. "Christianity
was formerly propagated among the _heathens_."--_Murray's Key_, 8vo, p.
217. The word _youth_, likewise, has the same peculiarities.

OBS. 36.--Under the present head come names of fishes, birds, or other
things, when the application of the singular is extended from the
individual to the species, so as to supersede the plural by assuming its
construction: as, Sing. "A great _fish_."--_Jonah_, i, 17. Plur. "For the
multitude of _fishes_'."--_John_, xxi, 6. "A very great multitude of
_fish_."--_Ezekiel_, xlvii, 9.[157] The name of the genus being liable to
this last construction, men seem to have thought that the species should
follow; consequently, the regular plurals of some very common names of
fishes are scarcely known at all. Hence some grammarians affirm, that
_salmon, mackerel, herring, perch, tench_, and several others, are alike in
both numbers, and ought never to be used in the plural form. I am not so
fond of honouring these anomalies. Usage is here as unsettled, as it is
arbitrary; and, if the expression of plurality is to be limited to either
form exclusively, the regular plural ought certainly to be preferred. But,
_for fish taken in bulk_, the singular form seems more appropriate; as,
"These vessels take from thirty-eight to forty-five quintals of _cod_ and
_pollock_, and six thousand barrels of _mackerel_, yearly."--_Balbi's
Geog._, p. 28.

OBS. 37.--The following examples will illustrate the unsettled usage just
mentioned, and from them the reader may judge for himself what is right. In
quoting, at second-hand, I generally think it proper to make double
references; and especially in citing authorities after Johnson, because he
so often gives the same passages variously. But he himself is reckoned good
authority in things literary. Be it so. I regret the many proofs of his
fallibility. "Hear you this Triton of the _minnows?_"--_Sha